This invention relates to a hanger for holding one or more pieces of limp material, such as textile garment pieces either as individual pieces or as groups or stacks of such pieces, and for attachment to a conveyer trolley for moving the pieces from work station to work station in a conveyorized garment making plant or the like, and deals more particularly with an improved construction of such a hanger having one or more grippers for releasably holding work material to the hanger.
The general purpose of the hanger of this invention is similar to that of the hanger shown in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 794,630, entitled CONVEYOR HANGER WITH A PLURALITY OF MOVABLE GRIP ELEMENTS and assigned to the same assignee as this application. The hanger of this application is in some respects an improvement on the hanger of said application.
The general object of this invention is to provide a conveyor hanger having at least one gripper capable of releasably holding in place a unit of work material against a relatively large force tending to pull the work unit downwardly out of the hanger, thereby suiting the hanger to use with relatively large and heavy work units, the work unit nevertheless being easily withdrawn from the hanger by pulling it sideways from the hanger, a gripping element of the gripper being rotatable during such sidewise pulling movement to facilitate the same.
Another object of the invention is to provide a gripper construction which may readily be used in a conveyor hanger having either a single gripper or a number of grippers.
Further objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiments and from the accompanying drawings forming a part hereof.